The Dispossessed

by Szilard Borbely

  My grandfather very often tells the story about how they drank each other’s urine because it healed them. When he talks about this, he always spits. He aims his spit next to a worm. It writhes in front of him. He tramples on it with his lame leg and, pushing the toe of his boot in front, turns it around on the worm. He treads it thoroughly into the earth. Of the worm, just a few damp patches remain, and a few grains of earth trodden together. Then he spits again. He brings the flask to his mouth and throws his head back with a sudden movement. He shakes the flask in case there might be yet another drop in it.

  “Your parents also want to leave. To Canada?” he mutters to himself. “What the hell is there in Canada? It’s not a country, it’s a pig-fattening farm,” he mutters to himself. “Frici got so fat. Because he worked in a chocolate factory. What use was that to him?” he says and waves his hand.

  Frici’s heart couldn’t take the weight. He died of a heart attack in ’73.

  DURING THE HOLIDAYS, WE ALWAYS GET SOME PHOTOGRAPHS from Frici and his family. A picture of the house in Canada where they live. Of the family. And of the enormous Christmas tree that stands in a richly furnished room. The surfaces of the photographs are strangely ribbed. One boy stands amid many presents. I look at the picture enviously with my older sister. The tree is decorated differently than how we do it. There are neither candles nor colorful Christmas candy on it. Just some spheres.

  “What’s the point of sending these? It’s a waste. It would be enough to write about it,” my grandfather always says. “Enough to write that we’re doing this or we’re doing that. What’s the point of all these cairds?” That’s what we call photographs.

  Frici and his family have been living in Toronto for ten years now. They say that there are a lot of Hungarians there. After they defected, my grandfather and his family continually listened to Radio Free Europe. They were waiting for a message from Frici.

  My grandmother yelled. She lamented her son, as was fitting. She put his photograph on the table and moaned. She covered her face, and in her delirium she spoke like the lamenting women of old.

  “Woe, my dear son. Woe is me! How could you have done this? Why did you leave your mother here? Woe, woe . . .” and so she mourned her son.

  Frici was the firstborn. There were still two boys and two girls at home. Two others died when they were still infants. My father was the youngest among those who survived. After him one more baby was born, but my grandfather dropped it on the stone. It fell on its head and it died. They don’t talk about it. Especially not in front of the kids.

  Sometimes they mention it on All Souls’ Day. But always in whispers so we don’t hear what they’re talking about. Personally I think that it didn’t fall but was dropped. In addition, my grandfather dropped it.

  “The old cripple,” people said, “he’s mean. Cripples are evil.”

  Puppies are beaten to death so they don’t have to be fed. Kittens are sewn into a sack and drowned in water. If our bitch gives birth, my mother always asks my grandfather to do it.

  I’M WALKING WITH MY FATHER. BETWEEN US THERE ARE thirty-one years. Thirty-one can be divided only by itself. And by one. My father holds my hand only very rarely. I count the fence posts. He hardly ever touches me. I would like it if he patted my head. If sometimes he would embrace me.

  When my maternal grandfather comes to our house, I always sit in his lap. I listen as he tells stories. He tells stories about the war.

  “It’s been seventeen years since I came home from the Caucasus,” he says. “I think about it every year. It’s like it never even happened. In the fifth year, I thought I would never come home.” The number five can be divided only by itself. And by one.

  “Now it all feels so far away, like it never happened. It’s just that I can’t forget about it,” he sighs, and he tells me stories about the war and his captivity. In the meantime, he holds me close.

  “But it’s good that you’re all here,” he says.

  My father never embraces us. Not any of us.

  But he doesn’t hit my older sister anymore, because she’s big now. The bigger girls just get a slap now and then. The boys are beaten with lashes and suspender straps. Until they start hitting back. That’s the custom.

  My father doesn’t beat us because he’s not here at home. When he sneaks back to the house in the evenings, he doesn’t have the time. He’s not even in the mood. He’s tired after riding on his bike for so long. And he’s happy to see us.

  The other boys in the village are still beaten by their fathers. Mainly when they’re drunk. When they come back from the tavern. My father comes back like that just occasionally. My mother says that since they themselves were beaten, they think that’s how it has to be done.

  “That’s how you make a man out of him,” they say.

  “One day you’ll thank me for this,” they say as they finish the beating.

  When they get home, they take the rope soaked in advance in the trough in the courtyard. They step into the house, and they begin to roar:

  “You sons of whores!” That’s what they usually say.

  Then the woman is afraid, too, and she does not dare quarrel with her sire. That’s when the beating begins. If the wife says something, then she is beaten, too.

  But the drunker the men are, the more quickly they get tired and stop. Before, my father would be in the tavern the whole evening, as well. My mother didn’t allow this to happen every day. So then he stayed away from the tavern.

  “Maybe that was the problem,” she said later on. “Maybe that’s why they singled us out.”

  When they really goaded him, he went to the tavern sometimes, just to show them who was boss at home. That he could go wherever he wanted. But even that didn’t help.

  EVER SINCE MY GRANDFATHER STARTED TELLING ME ABOUT the war, I’m afraid to go to sleep. He told me about the Don, about the front, about the Russian winters, the summer of ’43. About the partisans and the reprisals. About the atrocities of the Hungarian military police in the army camps. Because they had to show the Ukrainians who was boss.

  “They were inhumane,” he says. “They let criminals run wild. The officers closed their eyes. The reprisals were savage. They threw infants in the air and caught them on their bayonets. In villages where the residents had helped the partisans, they were crammed into a shed and burning torches were thrown on the roof. The drunk camp guards stood around and machine-gunned down the people on fire running out of the building,” he said. These pictures never left him. He talks about it every time I see him. The horror is still with him now, even after twenty-five years.

  “The Germans were even more inhumane. They despised the Hungarians. In forty-three, during the retreat, they still had gasoline. We were dragging ourselves along on foot. Whoever sat down froze to death right then and there. The uniforms they issued were useless in the Russian winter.

  “The soldiers of the Wehrmacht were escaping from the Russians in trucks. We were on foot. Our limbs were frozen. When we tried to clamber up onto the trucks, the Germans shot into the air as a warning. They would’ve shot us down if we had not obeyed the command. If someone clambered up onto the platform of the truck, they sliced off his fingers with a carving knife. There was no camaraderie there. They wouldn’t even talk to us. Not even in the camp, when we were prisoners,” he said.

  “The camp guards were drunk. They were always drunk. They were merciless. In an operation in a foreign country, it is necessary to intimidate the enemy, I subscribe to that,” he said. “But to throw those innocent infants onto the tip of a bayonet, there is no justification for that . . .”

  Before I fall asleep, the tiny infants being flung through the air come to my mind. I’m afraid for the Little One. I’m afraid that a spark might fly out of the stove. That we might all burn to death. I say my prayers so as to think of something else, but all the time I keep seeing the burning people in the snow.

  “Oh, the poor regent”—that is how my grandfather always
finishes his storytelling.

  MY MOTHER IS MAKING MATZOH. SHE LIKES MATZOH. IF there’s no bread and she has to make something quickly, she always makes matzoh. She rolls out the unleavened dough very thin and puts it on the top of the stove. It toasts on the burning iron surface. Brown spots appear on the white dough. Sometimes there are little bumps in it. Vapor makes the dough uneven. It becomes full of little bumps. When it has blistered, she turns it over to toast the other side.

  “Soon it will be the Sabbath,” she says. “Look out the window to see if anyone’s coming,” she says.

  I hear the subterfuge in her voice. We don’t let strangers in. The villagers are strangers.

  “Maybe our father is coming home?” we ask trustingly.

  “That’s all we need! God forbid,” she says. “Today we’re playing that we’re waiting for the Messiah.”

  “Whence shall he come?” asks my older sister, who takes up the game immediately.

  “Does that matter? We’re playing at being Jews,” says my mother. “Quickly, put on your father’s hat for the holidays,” she says.

  I take down my father’s black hat from the top of the dresser. Usually my father wears a beret. During the week, only people who wear trousers have hats on their heads. But there are no Jews anymore.

  Everyone wears dark-blue berets now. The sunlight makes their color fade quickly. In the summer, they’re worn against sunstroke. At other times, they’re worn because of the cold. In the dead of winter, ushankas, Russian hats, are worn. The old people wear fur hats. In their ushankas, the men look like the Soviet soldiers from the movies. The quilted trousers go with the quilted jackets. That’s what is worn in winter. At other times, people just wear blue work trousers with woolen drawers. They only put on hats on Sundays. Well, and for funerals, weddings, and baptisms.

  “I can only see your ears sticking out,” my sister mocks me. The hat is too big. I have to push it back, like the men do when they are angry. Or when they’re in a good mood and they banter with each other. The hat askew on my head is funny. You can’t take someone seriously wearing a hat like that on their head.

  “A JEW IN THE HOUSE, AROUND HIS NECK A BLOCK!” THESE words are always chanted when somebody leaves his hat on his head. I don’t understand why they say this. It doesn’t make any sense.

  “Don’t you mean chock?” I ask my sister.

  “A block of wood is put around the neck of the cow leading the herd. A chock is what we put around the dog’s neck so it won’t run away too far.”

  “That’s not a block,” says my mother, “but a bell.”

  Máli makes fun of me if I forget to take off my cap. She laughs at me. Then her face is full of wrinkles. Máli is ugly. I like her, but I’m also repelled by her. When she talks, saliva dribbles out of her mouth.

  “Stop putting on airs! Don’t play the gentleman!” she always says and farts once. She can fart whenever she wants to. She is proud of this ability. She lets it out for a long time. She lifts up one of her legs, like dogs do when they’re pissing. And she laughs in her deep voice.

  Nothing disgusts her. She eats everything. Even spoiled food.

  Just like my grandfather. He gives it a sniff and starts spooning it into his mouth without a word.

  “Papa, didn’t it go bad?” Máli asks him.

  “It will in five minutes,” he always answers.

  Máli guffaws.

  “Everything’s fine for shit,” she says. “It all goes to the same place.”

  She’s happy when she can provoke my mother. She likes to annoy people, but she especially likes to annoy my mother. My mother can’t forgive her the grime, disorder, and negligence that she lives in. As well as the never-ending back talk and swearing.

  “How can you live like that, just jeering at everything?”

  “You’re always angry, like a fucked fox,” Máli retorts.

  My mother doesn’t like Máli. If we’re at her house, we have to help. Máli can’t cook. Whatever she makes is inedible. If we don’t eat it, she fights with us. She mocks us.

  “May shit wear down your teeth if you don’t want to eat this! You’re all so picky, just used to your gentlemen’s fare,” she says. And there’s always some work to do.

  But now we’re at home. The Little One is asleep. And our mother is in a good mood.

  “Look to see if the Messiah is coming,” she says again. In the meantime, my older sister has covered her hair with a lace doily. And she’s making a pious expression.

  “Wherefrae shall we await Him?” I ask.

  “There-frae, from the Ramp. But it’s possible that He will come along the lower end of the garden, from Berek,” she says. Only from the direction of Gypsy Row do we not await Him. We can’t see in that direction from the house. We can only see toward the village. I stand watch at the window with my sister. My mother sits at the table. The sun sets behind Kepec Meadow. Its huge crimson perimeter floats on the edge of the sky.

  The evening star has already come out. This is when my father usually breaks his Friday fast. He took a vow. But he can’t say what it is. We always ask our mother whether she knows what it is. She says that even she doesn’t know. If she knew, then it wouldn’t be a secret. And then the fast wouldn’t have any effect. Our father would be keeping it in vain, even if he didn’t happen to forget it. Because he does forget it sometimes. But this is a forgivable sin, as long as he doesn’t forget it on purpose. If he is at home on a Friday evening, we wait for the evening star to come out. But he isn’t at home now.

  With my mother, we play at waiting for the Messiah, like the Jews. The stars are already faintly glimmering in the cloudless sky. It is Friday evening. The Sabbath is here. But He didn’t come today, either. He just didn’t come. We waited in vain. My mother tells us about Jerusalem. And about Queen Esther. And how one day we will celebrate together. But not here.

  WHEN MY MOTHER GETS HOME, SHE IS HYSTERICAL. SHE keeps shouting at us. She was at the doctor. We listen in silence, with a sense of guilt. Because we’re always doing something bad. Now we’re afraid that our mother might notice that we ate something without permission. We cut thick slices of bread, as we are not allowed to. That’s what we do when no one’s looking. First we thickly smear lard from the tub on the bread, then we sprinkle as much sugar on the bread as the lard will absorb. This, however, is squandering. Our mother is not keeping an eye on the sugar bowl these days, and she doesn’t look into the pot of lard. Suddenly she begins to choke, and she throws up. She throws up into the basin. I sense from the smell that she is vomiting bile again. Lately she’s been vomiting up green stuff a lot. It’s bile. It’s smeared all around the edge of the enamel washbasin. I immediately take the washbasin outside and spill it out. Then I wash out the basin at the well. I’m also disgusted, but my sister can’t bear to do it.

  I have to do it, because I’m the man of the house now. I have to cut the chicken’s necks. My sister is repulsed by that, as well. She should learn how to do it, though, because I can’t always be at home. There is no shochet.

  Now we withdraw into the corner like frightened chickens, and I hide there with my sister. In doing so, we knock over the water can. The lid of the can rolls far away. I crawl after it, under the trestle table. My father made the table. The table legs are made from poplar wood. Only the surface is made from good wood. Poplar wood is not really good for furniture. It gets moldy and mildewy. Now I’m hoping that I can hide here. My sister quickly grabs the water can, but the floor is already covered in water. My mother grabs at her hair and pulls on her ponytail. With her other hand, she slaps her back and forth. My mother’s hand moves in the air like a reel. My sister moves her head, trying to break free. She pleads with her.

  “Please don’t hurt me, M’my, please don’t hurt me! I’ll be good,” she supplicates over and over again.

  I don’t dare come out from under the table. I’m squeezed in next to the bucket of pig swill. It stinks. It always stinks, but now the stench is worse t
han usual. My mother might have thrown some rotten eggs into it. I see shells floating on top of the swill. Pigs like rotten eggs. I squeeze the lid to myself. The enamel chipped off a long time ago. Where it’s chipped off, rust is forming. Holes will form there. Then we will have to get a new one, but there’s no money for that. Everything has to be treated with care. Even shoes have to be treated with care.

  “We don’t squander things,” my mother always says.

  Extravagance is a great sin. Everything must be carefully maintained. More than anything else, we have to be careful with our clothes.

  I feel the rusty spot beneath my finger, lightly touching it, because the surface there is not smooth. My skin sticks to it. It’s rough. I am squeezing the cold canister cover to myself so hard that my fingers are spasming from the strain. I don’t notice, because in my fright I keep squeezing it convulsively.

  At the same time I can’t take my eyes off my sister, I am sorry for her, the poor wretch. I would like to help her. I feel guilty, as if I had betrayed her. I hid away here, and now my mother is expending her rage solely on her. My sister protects her head from the blows with her two hands. My mother’s face scares me, because at times like this it is completely distorted. Now it looks like the face of the crazy woman who stops everyone in the street and asks them: “Are you my enemy, as well?” It’s hard to tell what she is thinking. She claims that she is being pursued. She considers everyone to be her enemy. But she can’t decide who is and who isn’t one. So that is why she stops everyone and asks them.

  My mother tears out my sister’s hair. I’m crying, I can’t watch. We’re always doing something. Something bad. We don’t mean to, though.

  “You’re always making problems for me,” says my mother. I am helpless. I stick my thumb in my mouth. I suck on it again, although I stopped doing that a long time ago. I sense the taste of rusty iron on it. My mother’s hand slaps back and forth. She’s starting to get tired. She’s still hitting my sister, but she’s crying now, too. Her blows are weak.